I think I’m the first per­son in his­tory to invent a math based off of The Bea­t­les.  I did it so peo­ple who don’t lis­ten to The Bea­t­les can eas­ily learn every­thing they need to know about the band. Below are the basics of this new branch of mathematics:

{Paul, John, George, Ringo} sub­set {The Bea­t­les} subset {£}

Paul or John or George or Ringo = ?

Paul + John + George + Ringo = $$$$$ and :-/

Paul + John + George + Ringo + drugs = $$$$$ and !!!!!!!!

Paul + drugs = John + drugs > George + drugs > Ringo + drugs

Yoko = –infinity

John + Yoko + drugs = ???!!! + :-{

Paul + drugs = $$$$

John + drugs = $$

George + drugs = $$

Ringo + drugs = $

…as it’s yet another shin­ing exam­ple of lib­eral bias by one of the big three media outlets.

Talk­ing about areas of the nation that are recov­er­ing best from the eco­nomic slump, an arti­cle from ABCnews.com (which can be read HERE) men­tions Texas as a good exam­ple.  It explains why:

“The places that are likely to recover the fastest seem to be places that have suf­fered the least dur­ing the reces­sion,” says Howard Wial, who heads up research on metro and regional economies at the Brook­ings Institution’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Pol­icy Pro­gram. Texas, he notes, has a fis­cally sta­ble gov­ern­ment but­tressed by oil and gas rev­enues and spend­ing from Uncle Sam.

Now every­one can agree that Texas has a fis­cally sta­ble gov­ern­ment, and it does have oil and gas rev­enues (as oth­ers states have var­i­ous rev­enues from their resources).  But to claim that Texas has weath­ered this slump because of spend­ing by Uncle Sam?  What?

What the arti­cle con­ve­niently doesn’t state is that the Brook­ings Insti­tute is a lead­ing lib­eral think-tank.  Of all the places to get input on why Texas is doing so well, ABC went to the Brook­ings Insti­tute who told them it’s because of gov­ern­ment spend­ing by Uncle Sam!

If you look HERE at cnnmoney.com, you’ll see in their list of ‘where the jobs are at,’ 5 out of the top 7 coun­ties are in Texas.  Guess how many Cal­i­for­nia or New York coun­ties make the top 25?  Zero.  Does any­one really think states that have the biggest gov­ern­ment spend­ing in them are far­ing the best dur­ing this reces­sion?  Really?  Well there are Vir­ginia coun­ties in the top 25, so I guess the coun­ties next to D.C. do well (sur­prise, surprise).

Now, the big 3 aren’t as biased as NBC’s lit­tle sis­ter MSNBC.  A few weeks ago I heard Rachel Mad­dow say that Fox con­tin­u­ally runs bogus sto­ries in order to make ‘white Amer­i­cans afraid of black Amer­i­cans.’  But to some extent, that doesn’t bother me as much as what ABC, CBS, and NBC do, and have done for decades.  The anchors and reporters at MSNBC are out-of-the-closet Left­ists.  Instead of hav­ing an intel­lec­tual dis­cus­sion about pol­icy, they just bash peo­ple with oppos­ing views as big­ots. But at least they’re open about who they are.

The big 3 try to hide their bias and that’s what’s so immoral about it.

I wish one of them would move out of DC and NYC and into the Heart­land.  They’d cer­tainly gain a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world…

Here’s an arti­cle in the Wichita Eagle about the very last roll of Kodachrome being processed: LINK.  This is sig­nif­i­cant in so many ways and a ter­rific sym­bol of what’s been going on in our mod­ern econ­omy.  Back in the day I was a heavy user of Kodachrome, but like most peo­ple I haven’t used it in many years.

Here’s what’s hap­pened: Film has gone by the way­side in favor of dig­i­tal technologies.

Here’s what hap­pened as viewed from the Left:

Thou­sands of peo­ple have lost their jobs!  Film pro­cess­ing plants have shut down, caus­ing hard­work­ing Amer­i­cans to be put out on the street!  How could we have let this hap­pen?  The gov­ern­ment needs to step in and help these peo­ple as their suf­fer­ing is a direct result of cor­po­ra­tions putting prof­its before people!

Here’s the view from the Right:

The free mar­ket found a more effi­cient and high qual­ity way of allow­ing peo­ple to cap­ture pho­tographs.  This increase in util­ity will save peo­ple time, money, and will result in bet­ter pho­tographs.  There will be losses of labor from the clo­sure of out­dated processes and gains in labor from the new tech­nolo­gies and increase in con­sumer spend­ing (because peo­ple  won’t have to spend as much on pho­tog­ra­phy).  The lost jobs will free up labor for more effi­cient processes else­where.  The free mar­ket, as always, has found a bet­ter way of doing some­thing, and although there are indi­vid­ual win­ners and losers, there is a net over­all gain to humanity.

That’s the dif­fer­ence between Blue Amer­ica and Red Amer­ica.  For the first view, you just have to be able to observe and feel.  For the sec­ond view you at least need an intu­itive feel for economics.

Bye Kodachrome! I’ll miss you (but not that much)…

This is from Mar­ginal Rev­o­lu­tion, a very cool eco­nomic blog that I read fre­quently.   The x-axis is the year, the y-axis is the rottentomatoes.com score for M. Night’s movies.

The last cou­ple of days I saw two more amaz­ing movies.

The first, which is not a sur­prise at all, is Toy Story 3,  which has an amaz­ing 99% pos­i­tive rat­ing on rottentomatoes.com.  The guys at Pixar really knocked it out of the park again, in a very fit­ting con­clu­sion to one of the best ani­mated series of all time.  It’s hard not to shed a tear at the end of this movie, as it does a great job explor­ing the time when kids finally out­grow their toys.  And man, has the ani­ma­tion got­ten terrific.

In a non-Inception year, Toy Story 3 would have to be con­sid­ered a front-runner for Best Picture.

My IMBD Rat­ing: 10 out of 10

The sec­ond movie I watched down at the Cal­i­for­nia Sci­ence Cen­ter in IMAX.  Hub­ble 3D  was nar­rated by Leo DiCaprio.  It tells the story of the lat­est Hub­ble fix with some amaz­ing footage of the astro­nauts prepar­ing for the mis­sion and actu­ally doing the fix.  IMAX 3D rocks.  There’s no bet­ter way to feel what astro­nauts feel while doing their work above the planet.  The movie also takes us to places far away, like a neb­ula near Orion’s belt.  It’s a pretty awe­some experience.

I strongly rec­om­mend check­ing out these sci­ence related IMAX movies.

My IMBD Rat­ing: 8 out of 10

My morn­ing rou­tine (at least on my days off) used to start off with read­ing The Wall Street Jour­nal (paper edi­tion) while sip­ping cof­fee.  Dur­ing the day I would often read actual books (phys­i­cal things with paper) and even magazines.

It’s amaz­ing how fast this type of stuff is chang­ing.  I now get my finan­cial news online.  I love the WSJ.com but they recently started charg­ing (which is a good idea because their con­tent is def­i­nitely worth some­thing), but since I’m cheap I now go to free sites.  As I’ve stated fre­quently on this blog, I own a Kin­dle and that’s how I read the vast major­ity of my books (and I read more than ever).

Just recently, one of the mag­a­zines I sub­scribed to off-and-on over the years has gone dig­i­tal as well, and I dig it.  Cre­ative Screen­writ­ing now offers a dig­i­tal ver­sion at a reduced rate.  I just read my first dig­i­tal copy using their online reader and it’s pretty nifty.  I don’t think I’ll order a phys­i­cal ver­sion anymore.

I don’t have an iPad, and I don’t plan on get­ting one any­time soon, but there’s a whole gen­er­a­tion of kids grow­ing up that will use that device (or sim­i­lar devices like the Kin­dle DX) to read their books.  It’s a tremen­dous par­a­digm shift that will change the land­scape of media forever.

I like it, because it’s going to give peo­ple ever greater access to what they want and that’s usu­ally a very good thing.  I just hope that piracy doesn’t cause as much dam­age to the pub­lish­ing indus­try as I think it will…

When I think of the best books I’ve ever read, a few clas­sics come to mind: ‘About Time,’ ‘Up From Slav­ery,’ ‘Zen and the Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance.’ The com­mon denom­i­na­tor is that there is some­thing truly enlight­en­ing in the pages of these books.

My favorite text book of all time is ‘Price The­ory & Appli­ca­tions’ by Steven Lans­burg, an econ­o­mist at the Uni­ver­sity of Rochester.  It’s the book that taught me sup­ply and demand and for­ever changed my view of the world.

A few weeks ago I picked up another book by Lans­burg enti­tled ‘The Arm­chair Econ­o­mist.’  I can now add it to my best books list.

What Lans­burg does, more suc­cess­fully than I’ve ever seen, is take the basics of eco­nom­ics and express them in a lan­guage that almost any­one can understand.

For some rea­son, pro­fes­sors tend to write books in a way that makes them almost inde­ci­pher­able to nor­mal human beings.  Ever read a cal­cu­lus text book?  The beauty of ‘The Arm­chair Econ­o­mist’ is there’s no math, no curves, no messy charts filled with fig­ures.  It’s more of a con­ver­sa­tional approach using every­day exam­ples.  It works extremely well.

Why is pop­corn so expen­sive at the­atres?  Why do CEO’s have such high salaries?  Why are corn grow­ers in Iowa in essence auto­mo­bile manufacturers?

After I took a bunch of econ and finance grad classes, my life changed for­ever.  I started view­ing the world as econ­o­mists do.  My mind was opened to a new way of thinking.

Read­ing ‘The Arm­chair Econ­o­mist’ can give you a great glimpse into that world with­out hav­ing to go through all the wonky stuff.

I highly rec­om­mend the book for any­one who desires more clar­ity into how the world actu­ally works.

My rat­ing: 10 out of 10.

Up next: ‘On Writ­ing’ by Stephen King.

The median dura­tion of unem­ploy­ment is soar­ing.  I hope this slope reverses soon.  Unlike those in power, I don’t believe that more reg­u­la­tion and bor­row­ing is the way to do that how­ever.  I think the mar­kets are get­ting really spooked by the cur­rent debt levels.

If there’s a sil­ver lin­ing to be found here, I think we’ve proven what not to do dur­ing a severe recession…

I was able to catch ‘Incep­tion’ tonight at an employee screen­ing on the WB Lot.  I’m a big Chris Nolan fan so I went into it with enor­mous expectations.

It’s hard to talk about the film with­out giv­ing away stuff that would ruin the expe­ri­ence for peo­ple.  I’ll touch on a few things though which won’t con­tain spoilers.

The pac­ing of the first half of this movie is intense. It’s dizzy­ing.  You bet­ter pay atten­tion or you’ll not con­nect all the dots down-stream.

The last half of the movie is very multi-layered and keeps push­ing the audi­ence to fur­ther depths, mix­ing up the pace along the way.  The end­ing is fantastic.

If you like check­ers, The Black-Eyed Peas, or the Twi­light nov­els, you are going to HATE this film.

If you’re into chess, clas­si­cal marches, or Agatha Christie nov­els, you’re going to LOVE this film.

I absolutely loved ‘Incep­tion.’  I think it may be the best sum­mer block­buster since ‘The Empire Strikes Back.’  It’s a deeper, bet­ter acted ver­sion of ‘The Matrix.’

If I have one minor com­plaint, it’s that some of the action scenes in the sec­ond half could have been cut down.  But that’s very minor.

This story is awe­some.  It’s the anti-Michael Bay sum­mer movie we really needed.  You HAVE to use your brain to keep up with the story — you have no other choice.

Christo­pher Nolan is the best direc­tor on the planet right now, and the awe­some thing is he’s get­ting bet­ter.  I would have loved to see his dia­gram of this plot (which he must have had on a big chalk board some­where).  If Nolan can make this com­pli­cated plot a finan­cial home-run for Warner Bros., this can only be only be good for the future of film.  If we can get Michael Bay to have some finan­cial flops, that would even be better.

I’m obvi­ously really high on ‘Incep­tion’ right now.  The true test will be if it holds up upon mul­ti­ple view­ings.  I think it will.

My IMDB Rat­ing: 10 out of 10.

I’ve long been a fan of the insanely expen­sive Starbuck’s mocha’s and fraps, because they’re really damn good.  I usu­ally stop by on my days off once I wake up and get out of the shower.

Lately I’ve been bring­ing my net­book and doing some writ­ing.  Since Star­bucks had AT&T Wi-Fi, I would be able to log on and use my web-based writ­ing pro­grams.  As a bonus, they now have really good break­fast sand­wiches.  So I’d thor­oughly enjoy crank­ing out 3 hours of writ­ing on a Tues­day or Wednes­day morning.

Then on July 1^st, Star­bucks made their inter­net free for every­one.  Ever since, their inter­net con­nec­tion has been so slow, it’s essen­tially unus­able for me.  As a con­se­quence, the Star­bucks I go to, which was usu­ally packed with peo­ple on lap­tops, now only has a few peo­ple in it in the morning.

I’m won­der­ing if this is a tem­po­rary prob­lem.  I hope so.  It’s cramp­ing my writ­ing style…